Why Subscribers May Not Get Your New Videos

A common frustration among YouTube creators and viewers alike is that YouTube subscriptions are broken. That is, subscribers don’t get a creator’s new video in their subscription feed and thus never watch the video. Why does that happen and what can creators and viewers do to fix it? That’s the question we address here: how to fix your broken subscription box.

Any of you guys who are YouTube creators have probably experienced the frustration of hearing premium subscribers, “Hey, your videos. They’re not showing up in my subscription feed. I didn’t realize you were publishing new videos. I’m not getting notified of your new videos.”

Well, why is that happening? Let’s talk about three possible reasons why they might not get your videos and what you can do about it.

Confusing Subscription Feed with What To Watch Feed

One of the biggest reasons why sometimes your subscribers aren’t getting your videos is because they are confusing their subscription feed with their What To Watch feed. And I know for people like us who are active creators here on YouTube, it sounds crazy that anyone can confuse or mix up those two tabs on YouTube. But a lot of newer people who are watching videos, or newer to YouTube, they don’t know the difference between those. And so it is very possible for sometimes those people to go to their What To Watch tab instead of their Subscriptions tab and then wonder why your videos aren’t showing up.

And for those of you who don’t know, the What To Watch tab just shows you recommendations that YouTube thinks you would be interested in based on your past viewing history and the kinds of videos that you are watching and engaging with regularly. In order to see all the videos from channels that you’re subscribed to in reverse chronological order, you have to go to My Subscriptions and you can see all those there.

May Not Be Logged into YouTube

Problem number two is that your subscribers might actually be watching your videos but they’re not logged into YouTube when doing so. And so that when they do go to their What To Watch feed, your videos aren’t showing up there because, as far as YouTube is concerned, they weren’t tracking them because they weren’t logged in.

One little tip for you guys as creators is to make sure you are posting new videos to your channel regularly to give subscribers more and more opportunities to interact and engage with your content, thus driving your videos– more likely– to their What To Watch feed, then displaying your videos more prominently to them in more places. Because the more they interact with your channel, the more they are sending engagement signals back YouTube. Because the more they interact with your channel, the more engagement levels they send back to Google about your content.

Safety Mode Enabled

And number three, sometimes your viewers might have the Safety Mode enabled on their YouTube account, which filters out any video that potentially isn’t, like, acceptable for a two and three year-old. Seriously, like, the moderation filters on Safety Mode on YouTube are crazy strict.

To give you an example, almost half of all the videos I publish here on Video Creators were flagged and unavailable to people browsing YouTube in Safety Mode up until just like a month or so ago because I’ve been working with YouTube actively to fix this bug in their system. Because my videos here, they’re obviously clean. I don’t swear. There’s no profanity, there’s no nudity, there’s no drug references, there’s no racism– anything like that.

These videos are completely clean and yet anyone who had Safety Mode enabled on their account would not see, like, almost half of my videos in search, in related videos, in their subscription feed. It would just be like my videos didn’t even exist. They couldn’t even see the thumbnail of my videos. Everything’s been blocked.

So that could very well be a reason why some of your viewers are not getting all of your videos as well. I would love to hear from you guys though in the comments below– what other things have you experienced that seem to indicate to you maybe this is this problem. Maybe this is why my subscribers aren’t getting all my videos. Or maybe there’s other bugs or issues or problems with the subscription system that you have seen.

And do know that YouTube is working on a complete overhaul of their subscription system which is supposed to roll out sometime in 2015. Maybe then all these problems will go away, but we’ll have to wait and see.

If you want to get more YouTube subscribers and learn better how to craft a YouTube channel that’s designed to get viewers, to convert them into subscribers, and then to convert those subscribers into fans and then into a loyal, hardcore community, I have an ebook. It’s called “30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel” that will teach you how to do exactly that. Each day in the book contains a teaching, something you need to know. Then it contains a task, something that you’re going to do right then on your channel. And then it also includes further resources if you want to really dive deep into that day’s lesson and topic that we’re talking about.

And at the end of those 30 days, you will have a channel that is highly optimized to attract viewers and convert them into subscribers and to really start growing your channel overall. It’s awesome. It’s worked for tons and tons of people, so check it out. Link below or annotation or card around here somewhere if you want to go and check it out.

23 Comments

I have nearly 2,000 subscribers and I am lucky if I get 20 views on a video in the first 24 hours and only 50 views in the first week. As my subscriber numbers increase, the view count doesn’t. Feel like my channel is broken as the subscribers just aren’t seeing the videos! It’s very de-motivating to make new content

I’ve noticed that there are some YouTubers I enjoy watching that don’t come up in my subscription feed. At first, I thought it was just me, scrolling past their videos without noticing they were even there, however recently I have discovered that isn’t the case. I noticed videos from Vsauce, a well-known YouTuber, were not appearing in my feed. I looked again to make sure I had not jumped a video of him. I didn’t find anything from him, at that moment I didn’t think much about it, I thought “hey maybe they didn’t just post today”. Still craving for some videos I then checked my subscription to see if I wasn’t accidently unsubscribed to their channel but that wasn’t the case either. After entering their channel I see they had published a video a few hours back. Even when I went back to my feed to see if the little bug was fixed, the video did not appear. I just want to know if this is a common problem for others and if not bring awareness to it.

Sorry for the story telling, but i just thought this might had been the easiest way to disclose all the details all at once. Also help others better understand the problem

When I watch YT, I tend to go to the subscription page, add everything I’m interested in to watch later, and then run the playlist through. Recently, though, I was doing this, and as I’m watching the playlist, I noticed that a video in my notification feed wasn’t in the playlist. Went back through, verified time, triple checked. Yep, wasn’t there. Not sure why the subscription page wouldn’t include videos, and it does seem to be a rare occurrence, but it is happening.

If I am not researching something, and a new video is uploaded I don’t look at YT at all unless i get a notification (or email). Not everyone does social networking to get notified in other ways, creators are losing out until this is fixed (still not in 2017)…would it burden network bandwidth that much to notify ALL subs?

They could make it more granular, notifications adjustable per each creator we sub to?

Ok let me update you all … Youtube Google want to safe pennies and don’t send any new uploaded video to the subscribers anymore , and if you have 20K videos , thanks to the new system your uploads will have 100 views or so , that while before you were hitting 1K views a day .,

It’s very sad and a scam of Google Youtube to do so , many try to build a living with Google , and partner , the first years all went great until some scumbag at Google and Youtube decided to steal from the content creator , or let’s say it ,more clear , Kill as much possible channels , so they can make more money by paying less.

Youtube became a BIG SCAM , some people working there are a fraud , I have proof of what I say , Also the European Community should bring up this problem , Content Creators worked to earn Subscribers and Google neither Youtube have the right to stress that or change things around so these content creators lose income , that is a crime ,and content creators should start cases against these scumbags .

You worked the last years hard to get Subscribers and create content , that is like a investment. Who ever stress or takes that away is doing a illegal act and should pay for that.

Google and Youtube are scamming the creators around and it should stop , some people should get fired at Youtube it became a center with criminal activities and they even use false information to kill channels and yes we have the proof.

Best thing you can do is understand how it happened and how Google is stealing your investment. Just like Facebook , You created a Page , got like 3K Likes and wen ever you post a message or a Video , these scumbags at Facebook want you to pay , that while you already have those Likers (fb subscribers) so it’s a Huge scam , You let the farmer plant and get people to his market sales and then BOEM you halt that and tell the buyers , that farmer died or check this farmer ..that is misleading and false and should be punished with a law case.

Remember what I tell you , Youtube is a SCAM and Google is the leader of all the bandits .

Yes I totally believe this. I myself is one of the unlucky ones who is being targeted by Youtube and Google to go down. They killed my views and I now is just making 40% of what I was usually earning per month.. Somebody has to investigate this because it’s not a joke to invest your time and hard work to build a YT career.

I’m being told that Youtube suppresses views and only promote their larger channels. I just hit 100k subscribers and nothing has changed I still only get a few thousand to 10k views. Annoying that we work hard and the subscribers that we have earned and that want to see us don’t get notified of a new video post. Cyber Mafia. Kick out the little guys.

Great read but I have to add – Networking is 50% of success. It seems like the majority of people doesn’t know or just they don’t want to know what that means. It doesn’t mean to annoy people and spam your channel link on people’s videos, messages. It doesn’t mean sub4sub. It doesn’t mean promoting your videos in inappropriate places. Member of the community means TALKING TO PEOPLE! Now go at YouTube browse random SMALL channels, find them in the comment sections of other videos, or in featured channels of other channels. Watch one or several of their videos, watch the whole video, and then leave a POSITIVE comment, write something you liked about it, or suggest improvement if you think it’ll help.Then move to another video, to another channel and repeat. The channel owner WILL respond back because everyone at that stage loves comments, actually it is in human nature we like to be NOTICED. Source: I have YouTube channel with over 200k subscribers

Is there a way to communicate / message subscribers? previously there was a “feed” option under the home button in Channel. now it is no longer there. is there another way to send a message to All subscribers? What is the point of getting subscribers if we can’t communicate with them? thank you for any hints.

My problem is kind of strange. On or about Sept 6th 2017 my view counts for new uploads dropped dramatically and have stayed down. I have over 31K subs, and new uploads would easily get over 1500 views in the first 24 hours. Now I’m lucky if they get 400 in 24 hours. I queried some subs via FB and they told me they stopped getting notifications about the same time. I would like to be able to contact my entire sub base to let them know I am still uploading new content daily, and that I have a new podcast on iTunes and Stitcher as well. Any ideas on a way to do this. Maybe everyone’s notification feature has been switched off. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

Youtube appears to be intent on making me watch only what THEY want me to see. If I can no longer find the earliest and most recent videos on a favorite channel (like the 6-year documentation of Hamlet the Minipig), I’m done with the Youtube experience. I can’t even find answers to questions about navigating to favorite videos by a single subscriber or reviewing and selecting among the entire collection of videos by a subscriber. Has this feature really be removed?

I have 1.8 Million Subscribers – and my new Videos get 30,000 views in the first 24 hours. Its a terrible problem, and embarrassing as a creator who has worked so hard … and earned more than 1 Billion views. YouTube seems like they could care less.. even at my level.

Sorry to hear that, Aaron. I haven’t seen your channel, so I don’t know in your case, but I’ve seen consistently in other situations like that that the problem isn’t that YouTube isn’t pushing your videos to subscribers but rather that YouTube is learning that many of your subscribers are more interested in other content than yours right now. I don’t say that to be mean — I’m just saying it as something to consider. YouTube’s systems are very good at surfacing the videos people want to see to the people who want to see it at the time they’re ready to watch it. If you’ve been doing the same kind of content for a few years now, it may be time to consider reinventing yourself and reigniting not only your own passion for your videos, but your audience’s, too. What attracted an audience a few years ago doesn’t necessarily still work today. Hope that helps!

I appreciate the reply, and yes.. of course I’ve considered that! Heh, we have flown around the world and done all styles of content. What an awesome RC Adventure it has been. The “Algorithm” was not a factor in my Subscribers list when the viewers subscribed. The landscape of YouTube has certainly changed and creators can not evolve with it – then they will be left behind. We still get 15-20M views a month.. but its the new videos that do not get the traction from the subscribers upon release date. Your suggestion is definitely a factor. I look forward to the new roll outs from YouTube in light of the 2018 Vidcon.. YouTube continues to lead the way in innovating a massive video platform.

Hi Tim, I have 33K subs currently. I haven’t been able to upload videos as often as I used to but there is one concern I have. I used to get get about 2000 views in a day but it dropped to badly. I was talking to friends/subscribers about it and they all have told me that they are not getting any notifications from Youtube. They used to all the time before, but not for awhile…. I, myself, noticed that I wasn’t getting notifications from my subbed channels. and what I learnt was that I had to click on “RINGING BELL” mark right next to sub button to get notified every video uploaded. I didn’t know about it. then, I have asked my friends/subscribers if they have selected “RINGING BELL (Notification every video,” but their answer was “What’s that??” Then, when I asked them to look into it, their “RINGING BELL” wasn’t selected but “JUST A BELL (Occasional notification)” They have been subbed to my channel over the years. I don’t know how to solve this problems. How can I ask my subs to check on their settings?? If you could advise me, it is super helpful.

I have the same thing happened to me. I grew to 50K and get 200K views per video for just 5 months and was really doing great. Until one day my views just went down to 10K per video which is like a 5% of what I used to get. I uploaded regularly so consistency is not the issues. I also discovered that my subs don’t even get the notification everytime I upload a video and much worst is that every time I livestream, I get 0 views which never happend! Before I instantly get 100 views onwards when I open my livestream. I think youtube is targeting some of the channels and purposely just try to kill it by not endorsing and not showing their notifications to their subs. Unfortunately Im one of the unlocky ones. Now I feel like Im back to zero and starting all over again. Its just so sad that they would do this to us. I can’t even do anything legally or whatnot. I know some bigger youtubers with 200K subs who had the same issue where their views dont get to more than 2K So disappointing and don’t know what to do anymore!